Overambitious baking

I am fairly ambitious with my baking, trying new things that I expect to turn out brilliantly. Needless to say, I am sometimes disappointed.

Today I made a chili and lemon bread - which should have turned out as a baguette but instead came to be an over-sized roll. I also made, probably more successfully, a blackberry and coconut cake taken from this recipe from the BBC Good Food site. I followed it to the 'T' so I can't claim any credit for this.

Mine didn't look quite as good as there and I feel like 1 hour might be slightly too long baking, so if I tried again I would probably have it going for 40 minutes instead and then giving it a quick check.

However, and I admit that it wasn't a complete disaster, I had a lot of fun baking which is the most important thing.

Unfortunately, I reckon that it's a lot more calorific than it makes out but small slithers will make it last longer anyway!

7 Things I can learn from my dog

This is Chester. He's a 5 year old cocker spaniel with a fat belly, a love of dental chews and an over-active bottom. And since being at uni I haven't been able to spend nearly as much time with him as I would like. 

Like every dog, he loves food and all he seems to wait for is the next dinner time. It occurred to me one day this week - whilst he hovered over me emptying a can of dog meat into his bowl - that there are somethings I would like him to know about the world. There are things that, I wanted him to know, we're worth getting up for - and it wasn't always food. 

But then, I suppose, as a dog, there isn't much to look forward to besides food, walks, sleep and new people. 

If Chester couldn't learn the joys of my world, then what could I gain from him? 

7 things I can learn from Chester 

1) Everyone is good (until they're not)

One I the most important things that I can learn from Chester is that everyone should be seen as good. He is a great upholder of a phrase similar to 'innocent until proven guilty' only his is 'best friend until proven mortal enemy'.

Every dog Chester meets gets a bum sniff, nose rub or lick. Everyone is his best friend and they stay that way unless they attack him or give of an evil aroma. 

Sometimes I feel humans are judgmental of people we don't know or make false assumptions about one person for some reason or another. Chester doesn't do that and that makes the world a more friendly place. 

2) Seize every opportunity 

As Chester sits at your feet in the kitchen or springs up towards the source of any 'potentially edible and certainly unidentifiable' object on the floor, it may seem that he's greedy. 

Perhaps it could instead be called opportunity taking. 

At every and any point in the day when he is able to possible wiggle out a bit of food from us, he will try his best to make sure he gets it. 

3) Get good sleep 

One of the first observations about this dog is that he sleeps ALOT. He spends most of his day getting some shut eye and almost wakes up in the morning just to get his 9am nap. Although, whilst seems lazy, no one will deny the benefits of good sleep. 

4) Forgive and forget 

They always tell you this: dogs are great at forgiveness. A poorly treated rescue dog will, nearly always, go back comfortably into a home with humans. 

Why? Because they forgive. 

Chester is good at this. He doesn't hold a grudge. Much. 

If he's been told off, he'll still come back for love. If we shut him in a room alone whilst we have visitors (which he hates) he'll still come to us and thank us for letting him out. 

For him, it's not about what we did, it's about what we're doing for him now. 

5) Never settle for less than you deserve 

Chester is good at making sure that we give him what he thinks he deserves. Every morning at he waits for the specific order of food before he will eat anything. We lay out his biscuits in his bowl first at which he growls until we give him his dental stick. 

If we put out dry food for him at dinner but don't mix it with any dog meat, he goes on hunger strike and won't eat. 

He'll never let himself be denied what he knows he should get. 

6) Stick up for yourself

Chester is very vocal. That was on of the first observations that was made after the breeder handed him to us. He whines a lot and growls even more. But he's never stern until he is teased when he will (try to) give us a piece of his mind. 

7) Have no inhibitions

Chester is prone to drop a gargantuan stink on certain days whenever we are near. He definitely has no inhibitions in this area and when we tell him about it, he looks at us like: 'What? You think I did that?' 

What's the deal with veggie cakes? (+ recipe)

The carrot cake is never questioned. It has been around since the medieval age and it seems to resonate with people: it is deemed acceptable to put this orange vegetable into our cake batter and top it with cream cheese frosting.

It was initially used as a sweetener, for lack of cheap and good access to the more common staple of any cake: sugar.

When I told my mum that I was going to be making courgette cake, she turned up her nose. It had never struck me that courgettes in a cake might be weird, but I found a recipe on the BBC that I thought I wanted to try. If a website publishes it, I guess it's normal.

But, actually, putting vegetables in cake is the norm a few of the reasons being that they sweeten the cake (as we saw with the carrot situation), they create moisture in the cake and are cheaper/ more easily resourced.

I've seen countless recipes for beetroot brownies and vegetables are a particular favourite for bulking out 'healthy' cakes.

So, today I've made a courgette traybake with orange (which I have yet to taste!) I have taken and adapted this recipe from BBC Good Food's courgette muffin recipe. 

Cuts into 8 large rectangles
PRE-HEAT OVEN TO 200 DEGREES C

1) Peel 180g of courgette and grate

2) Place in a large bowl

3) Add the juice of 1 satsuma and stir

4) Melt 75g butter and add to the mixture

5) Add one egg and stir (NB. make sure that the butter has sufficiently cooled to avoid creating scrambled egg)

6) Add 300g plain flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp of mixed spice and 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon

7) Stir until all combined

8) Now add the juice of 2 more satsumas

9) Stir in 100g caster sugar and a generous handful of golden raisins

10) Now place in a shallow square tin and bake for 25 minutes

11) Once removed from the oven, leave to cool for 10 mins then turn out onto a wire rack

12) Slice into 8 and consume!

 

How I learned to love to be single

For all my life, in terms of relationships, it's just been me, myself and I. I just fancied writing about something that, maybe, everyone feels like they have to do. I know that I've felt slightly abnormal because I haven't followed the 'conventions of teenage-hood', as it were. But I guess I haven't found the right person. In fact, the more and more I think about it, it seems like I might be happier, single. I don't want this post to later be hypocritical. What I write today is jut how I feel now. (Also, this is aimed at no one in particular, but just my general experience :D) 

* 

Growing up, I think much of my school life revolved around who was going out with who. It was like trivia: Guess who's going out with ___?!" 

It was always quite exciting to find out but more so to see how long people could keep the girlfriend and boyfriend status up. 

As we moved from little year 7s to year 10s and 11s, relationships began to last longer than a matter of weeks that you could count on your right hand. 

Love was now real. 

I wasn't ready for a boyfriend in year 7. In fact, I was still playing with Barbie's when I got home after school. But, low and behold, that was the last time I ever had a 'boyfriend'. I say boyfriend like this because, even thought we said we were on a relationship, we most probably weren't. 

I hated being social outside of school and so cinema dates and going to each others houses was a no-go. We simply saw each other in school. But even then, it wasn't love so much as it was experimental. 

But still, for all my false delusions about love, I still wanted to have someone. 

Every new school year I thought: this will be it. But every year I ended, I was still single.

It was finally at university when I realised how important it was to have your own time. I saw people every day. When I cooked dinner. I heard them as I went to bed. I bumped into everyone, everywhere. 

Though the social side of things has really helped me and is something that I really love about uni, I did still need my free time. 

I found a few spare moments to blog. But I hardly ever had time to read for pleasure nor work on writing stories. There was always something to be done and if I rejected social meetings in order to spend time with me, myself and I on a hobby, I felt anti-social.

I missed the time I had to myself. To do nothing or, conversely, work on something extra-ordinary. 

I also began to work out that being in love with someone was an incredibly emotional and time-consuming thing! (It also ate most of your credit and got you to watch films that you wouldn't normally watch, with food that you wouldn't normally have bought). 

Having a boyfriend was all-encompassing. You had to think for not only 1 person but 2. 

Maybe that's because I'm selfish in that respect, or maybe because I just don't know enough but there are some things I love about being un-romantically-attached. 

- I can eat what I want by the call of my stomach 

- I spend more time with my friends 

- I can get a cheap phone tariff 

- I can choose to see family or go on trips at the drop of a hat 

- I can spend more money on my family's presents at Christmas 

- it's ok to spend all my holiday in Dubai 

Maybe things will change as I get older, but sometimes there are people who ask: 'is there anyone you like?' Or who say: 'He'd be good boyfriend material.' But to both statements I would have to answer 'no' and 'maybe' and as for why: 'because I just like it this way.'